


Five Years Later

by demalore



Category: Over the Garden Wall (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-27
Updated: 2015-07-27
Packaged: 2018-04-11 10:37:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4432247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demalore/pseuds/demalore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Both of the brothers have been lost.  One to a life of grief, and one to something far more sinister.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Years Later

Tween legs shuffled back and forth against a green bedspread, mussing up his mother’s careful sheet placement.  The room was strewn with paper and dead cassette tapes, exactly as its original caretaker had left them.  Greg was careful not to touch anything, leaving it a spotless shrine to his lost sibling.

“I know it’s been months, but we still need to be careful,” an authoritative male voice rose from downstairs.  The door to Wirt’s room was wide open, and Greg heard every anxious word.  “He’s been unstable ever since the incident.  Can hardly blame him, but I think he’s taking it too far.”

“The grieving process is...different for everyone,” a softer voice answered, just as tightly strung as its partner.  “Just a little more time--”

“It’s been _years_ , Angela!”  Greg tightened his grip on his knees, his fingernails digging through the cheap fabric.  Boths his pants and shirt were black, featureless.  His taste in clothing was hardly the only thing to have changed since the Halloween of five years ago.

“I know it’s been hard for him, but he has to move on eventually,” his father continued, his lecturing accompanied by clamorous linoleum pacing.  It was hard to believe that a single person was responsible for the ruckus downstairs.  “And these new habits of his are simply ridiculous.”

“There’s nothing ridiculous about it,” the woman snipped, her voice small but strong enough to put an end to the surrounding noise.  The sound of Greg’s legs against the bed he sat on seemed much louder in the quiet tension.  “This is serious, and you know it.”

“The kid’s in middle school now, he should know better.”  His father seemed to have calmed down, a heavy sound indicating that his worried feet were taking a rest.  Greg waiting for more nagging, fingers tightened in front of him, but heard only a tired echo, “he should know better.”

Greg’s right hand dropped from its perch, slipping under the bed’s top mattress.  When he brought his hand back, its tallest appendage bore a sharp red line, melting down the fingertip.

He did know better.  And that was why he had to try again.

~

The forest was always darker than he remembered.  A few times before he had tried bringing a flashlight with him, but the Unknown wouldn’t allow it.  Even matches seemed to be too advanced for this place, stuck in a temporal ditch of oil lamps and forgotten customs.  He squinted his eyes, straining to recognize the path he walked.

The darkness around him swallowed his clothes, leaving his head to bob above two thin, scarred arms.  They had become a sort of calendar at this point--one strip of rusted flesh for each turn of October’s screw.  One for each failure to come back with the person he sought.

Though any length of time here filled only an instant in the living world, the Unknown never seemed to change throughout the years, apart from its growing dreariness.  Same struggling schoolhouse, same musical tavern.  Age was an unchanging trait for the permanent residents, a fact set in stone, virtually meaningless.  Greg was the only one to alter in appearance, for, as far as he knew, he was the only one to come back.

He passed familiar landmarks, each one bringing memories that encouraged him to run faster.  Only a few notes of a familiar tune met his ears before the schoolhouse was out of sight.  The wind howled its complaints against his haste, but its army of rain and thunder couldn’t encourage him to stop at the tavern.  There was no time for songs, not when he could regain consciousness at any moment.

As fast as he ran, the forest never gave in, leading him on lazy stretches of nothing but crackling fall colors.  The first time he had traveled this road, the woodsman had been a bad omen, but now Greg would give anything for a sense that he was getting closer.  The forest knew it was being cheated, denied its rightful prey again and again, and baited Greg away from his quarry as long as it could.

The forest wasn’t the only player in this game, however, and Greg was not the only hunter.  After hours of running in silence, Greg skidded to a halt at a faint rustling behind him.  He turned, narrowing his eyes to distinguish one dark figure from the foliage engulfing them.  Amidst the gnarled, tortured tree trunks, he could make out three pricks of light: one leaping and dancing in the wind, two wide and motionless.

“I knew you’d be here again,” a deep chord resonated through the night air, “looking for something that's no longer there.  You haven't changed, Gregory.”

“It’s Greg,” he snapped back, stepping closer to the source of taunting.  The figure behind the tree had no intention of moving, keeping the aged boy fixed in its unblinking sights.  “And stop trying to trick me.  You’ve lied before, and you’re just lying now.”

“Is that so?” the creature answered innocently, a twist in the twin orbs indicating a tilt of its head.  “Well, then, why don’t you try it again?  Go ahead, I won’t keep you waiting.”

Greg took a shaky breath, unnerved as ever by the Beast’s suave performance.  Ever since what happened five years ago, he had been alone with his memories of this place, isolated by puckering lips and doubtful smiles.  Here dwelt the one person who shared his destructive recollections, yet he used them as a weapon, undermining the courage that never failed to bring him here time and time again.

“Wirt, it’s me,” Greg said, his voice painfully close to what it had been five years ago.  “It’s your brother, Greg.  I can take you home, Wirt.”

The wind muttered to itself, sending stray leaves away to give Greg and his friend some privacy.  Both waited for the other to move, a staring contest between their wills.  Only the lantern refused to be still, licking at the edlewood oil provided by its new caretaker.

“Same old Gregory,” the creature cooed, softly shaking its head.  With a few quiet rustles, the figure rose from the shadows, its twisted antlers digging through the starry sky above.  Among the wreaths of horn was a cluster of branches, topped with a bleached avian skeleton, faithfully keeping watch over all she had failed to prevent..  A thin, young hand brought the lantern forward, lending Greg’s face a warm orange glow.

“How long will that formidable stubbornness last?” the stoic mouth questioned, its shallow breaths making the lantern’s flames shake with uncertainty.  Though his face, no older than an adolescent, his voice resonated with baritone depth.  Reaching from underneath the conical headpiece, brown tufts of hair shifted with the flowing air, framing two wide eyes ringed with pastel color.  If not for these two staring obstructions, it would have unmistakably been the face of his vanished brother.  Greg could almost imagine him smiling, instead of baring that dead, flat expression as he did now.  It wasn’t the the antlers or the lantern that told him it wasn’t Wirt, but the utter absence of emotion in those colorful eyes.

Greg’s breaths shattered into tight, hiccuping gasps.  The wind played along, stringing the moisture from his eyes.  “Wirt, we need to go home!”  He reached for his brother’s free hand, holding it tightly.  It felt like a plastic hand, some kind of cheap Halloween prank.

“But don’t you see, Gregory?” Wirt soothed, permitting his hand to stay in Greg’s, neither removing nor stabilizing it.  “We _are_ home.  Here, where no one can hurt us.”

“Wirt, that’s not true,” Greg cried, squeezing the corpse hand tighter, “you’re just not hurt here because you’re _dead!_ ”

“Sorry to have to tell you this, Gregory,” Wirt chuckled, though showing no hint of a smile, “but you’re dead, too.”

~

“--he’ll wake up?”

“I’m certain.  See, he opened his eyes just now.”

“Oh, Greg,” a woman sobbed at his bedside.  Instead of the green bedcover he had departed on, Greg now reclined on a white, antiseptic hospital mat, a bed he had grown to find just as familiar as the one at home.

The doctor stepped back.  He had run out of words to say after the first of these recurring incidents.  This had become almost routine, draining him of any practiced consolation he had left.

“Greg, this has to be the last time.  I…”  his mother broke down, too distraught to grab a tissue from the table next to him.

Greg stared blankly at her, as though he didn’t quite recognize the red, puffy face.  Though aware of the IV dripping consciousness back into his weak arteries, he didn’t feel tired.  There was a soreness in his wrists, still a bit raw from his latest escapade, but he paid it no mind.

No matter where he was, here or the Unknown, he never stayed for long.  After his first departure from this world, he had been ruined, damned to the life of a nomad.  Friendless, chasing after something as unobtainable as the wind itself.  And yet, this wind was all he had left.  Even donning horns, inhuman eyes, and no emotions at all, it was still the only part of him that hadn’t been completely lost.

“Sure, Mom,” Greg muttered, covering his latest scars with the hand untethered by life-support tubes.  “I promise.”

**Author's Note:**

> Criticism is very much appreciated!


End file.
